Perched

Perched on a hill like a crow on a well-made scarecrow,

the animate on the deceivingly inanimate,

observing traffic patterns as though they

are an enchanting enigma of the natural world.

Kitana and Vygotsky

There is this little girl named Kitana. Her parents named her after their favorite character in a video game called Mortal Kombat. What a great namesake. She has really taken a liking to me, along with two or three other little kids. They are like my little kid posse. Every time I walk in, they come running to me and hardly leave my side. That makes me feel good that there are people in the world that run to see me when I enter the building. (That is quite an egotistical statement, I dare say, but true nonetheless.)

Kitana follows me everywhere like a little puppy dog. It’s kinda cute, but at first, I was annoyed with her. Never in my life have I had someone talk so much to me about nothing in particular. If I am stuck in a conversation with an adult wherein the adult goes off on tangent after tangent with no connection between thoughts and does all of the talking, like my mother’s father used to (may he rest in peace), I usually find a way to stealthy get out of there as politely yet quickly as possible. I do not do that with Kitana. I let her go on and on about her fascination with bats and how she is going to be a bat someday, and other (what I think are silly) ideas that are tangible and real to her. Like I said, at first, it was hard for me to sit there and engage in conversation with Kitana.

But I realized something. Kitana is displaying something that the developmental psychologist Lev Vygotsky theorized about, namely the progressive internalization of speech. For him, the child, Kitana in this case, has not yet learned to keep her thoughts private—everything that comes to mind is spoken aloud. Only over time and through more social interactions, she will learn to turn these words inward into thoughts. And so it became easier, and much more enjoyable, to think of Kitana as free and unconstrained from the restraints that she will later learn from society on the appropriateness of expressing one’s mind all of the time.

Autonomy

The stars are violently twinkling.

Millions and billions of years ago, they decided to stir it up,

That some thing may appreciate their light messages tonight.

Too Revealing

The way she holds in her hands your face

and closely examines its features;

She pets the multifarious colored man-beard sprouting.

Clear Your Throat

My father's disposition was always something to be simultaneously admired and pitied and embraced.

The characteristic disruption in his voice, when important and mundane and filler words filled with love spilled from his brain to his lips to my ears,

was more like a temporary spastic cough,

than a conventional clearing of the throat, a habitual pause for

emphasis.

You have left me with nothing, save a bitter taste in mouth.

Heraclitus and Morpheus

Heraclitus and Morpheus

Constant waves of change hit my recognition like a heavy wall of water.

Splash.

And then subside

only for a moment.

And,

Splash! Again!

Experience: sense that.

No; sense me.

Conscious

and then back to the dark

and then, permeate

The Dough like

The Cookie Cutter

Some doodles

The last three are representations of what I like to call "Id Art". The concept comes from a combination of abstract expressionism and Freud's structure of the mind.

Ephemeral epiphanies

I am sitting on my roof in my underwear, nonchalantly smoking a cigarette, looking at the stars. Some cars drive by and I become self-conscious and I straighten out my legs. I become self-conscious because there is an observer. I begin to think of photons and how their state is contingent on an observer. They become self-conscious when observation is taking place. I realize that the photon is self-conscious because I am self-conscious; they are one in the same self-consciousness. I realize that the world is conscious of itself because I am conscious of my self. I inhale deeply as this realization hits me with a pang.

Trippy Doo Da

I've awoken in Gonzo's head: awkward and ambiguous juxtapositions of vibrant colors and other-worldy forms slowly drip down, as if pulled by gravity itself, to cover all that I can fix my eyes upon, like wax melting to drape my saucer-sized pupils; all of which signifying that the trip I have been impatiently anticipating is maturing and growing out of control, like Frankenstein's monster, beyond the limits of my mind's wimpy newbornesque grasp.

Midnight in Paris

A very enjoyable movie- the rendition of Hemingway's character especially. He spoke just like he wrote: simply and honestly, with a tasteful overemphasis of the masculine. And Dali's character, the epitome of a surrealist thinker: "I see... a rhinoceros!"

A jumble of mumble

There lay within me a need to be heard. Merely listening to myself would suffice. These elaborate linguistic and conceptual symbols I use to reveal me to myself: it is all a jumble. A jumble of mumble. If only I could stop thinking.

God, I sure do waste my thoughts.

I want to slap myself in the face. What kind of person am I to be so materialistic as to allow my thoughts be dominated by such lameness and mediocrity? Albeit society's pull to fit in is strong.

But this shallowness, I don't want it anymore; it is a waste of my life.

I am now a zealot for creativity and individuality, on a pilgrimage to explore the uncharted.